


Ghost

by Huldra09



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29995380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huldra09/pseuds/Huldra09
Summary: The war is over. Margaret is trying to find her footing as a civilian, but how can you start over when past horrors refuses to let go?(Mentions of thoughts of suicide, nothing graphic at all).
Relationships: Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	Ghost

_Dear Colonel Potter,_

_Or I guess it’s Sherman now, I don’t think I can ever get used to that – it was so good to hear from you! I can’t believe it has been almost a year since we said our goodbyes back in Korea.  
Being Mrs Potters Mr Potter sounds like it’s agreeing with you, and I can imagine how happy she must be to have you home.  
I’m so glad you were able to track me down. I havn’t really kept in touch with anyone from the 4077th, life has just been so busy since getting back to the States. Starting fresh in a new place has been very intense, and somewhat exhausting, but I feel like I’m settling in fine. I’ve made new friends and Atlanta is starting to feel like home._

_  
I did run into BJ a while ago, we were both in Sacramento for a conference. It was wonderful too see him, and it was hard to say goodbye all over again. He seemed so happy, and I am so happy that he is finally back with his girls. Having a family to come home to must be wonderful, being on your own can be a bit challenging at times._

_  
Being out of the army has been an adjustment for sure, but it was the right thing to do. I just couldn’t imagine ending up in yet another war, God forbid we will ever be involved in one.  
I guess I realized that the way the army sees the world and how I see it are different now. It was easier before, more black and white, there were good people and bad people and military dicipline was the way to keep order. Now I realize the world and the people in it are far more gray than black and white. Honestly, it was an overwhelming realization, and it has taken me quite a bit of effort to find my footing as a civilian. But I’m getting there. Maybe I should ask Hawkeye for advice; I believe he is the great expert on the civilian lifestyle.  
My father was not thrilled with my decision, as you can imagine, but I’m hoping he’ll come around eventually._

_  
So, while I was taking some vacation in Tokyo after helping out at the 8063rd, an offer about a nursing position in Atlanta came up, and before I knew it, I was heading there.  
I have a nice apartment, in a nice neighbourhood. It’s not very big, but after spending all those years in a tent just the fact that it has real walls, a roof that doesn’t leak and a door that locks is really all I need.  
Work has been good too, intense of course, lots new routines and new people to get to know, but the staff is dedicated and competent. Nothing like the personell at the 4077th though.  
Isn’t is strange, I am so happy the war is over and that you are all home with your families again, but I still find myself missing all of you more than I ever thought possible. When I’m in the OR, I can sometimes almost hear Hawkeye sing one of his silly songs, or him and BJ joking around, or Charles making a dry comment. Sometimes I am even sure it’s your voice I hear, asking me for an instrument.  
It feels like I have left a piece of my heart with everyone of you, and you are in my dreams at night. So are many of the casualties we treated and sometimes even you predecessor Henry Blake. I guess they are all just Korean residue and will go away eventually.  
Lets hope we can make a reunion happen one of these days, I can’t wait to see you all again!_

_It was so good to hear from you! Take good care of yourself and of Mrs Potter._

_  
Love,_

_Margaret_

I hope that was the kind of letter one would be happy to receive from an old friend. A letter one would put down with a contented sigh, and later at dinner tell your spouse about. ”You remember the Head nurse I told you about, Margaret Houlihan? Well, I just got a letter from her today, and she is doing great. Moved to Atlanta, and is getting on just fine with her life, new job, making friends. All good news.”  
I just wish it was true, Sherman, I really do. I wish I was the woman in the letter, getting on with her life, adjusting. But I’m not. I’m fumbling, trying to keep my head over water, and failing.

I wanted Tokyo to be cleansing, as if I could clean my body and mind from all the dust and grime and smells of the 4077th. I overindulged on perfumes and soaps, lotions and makeup, pretty dresses and high-heeled shoes. But no matter the amount of perfume I put on, it was like the air of the OR followed me wherever I went, I could still smell the bodies, the blood, the intestines.  
Sleeping in a big bed, with soft silk sheets, seemed like a dream beforehand, but as it turns out – big beds are just lonelier versions of small cots. I kept waking up, certain I had heard voices, was there incoming wounded, I was sure I’d heard someone call for help. I’d sit up in bed, confused and with my heart beating so fast, certain I needed to be somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there. I spent the small hours of several nights laying awake, watching a streak of light from the street outside shine in through the curtains.  
Tokyo was also full of familiar faces. Of invites and parties. One night there was someone I used to know. The drinks, the remeniscing, the dancing, and later his weight on top of me, it all felt so good. Sleep was deep and undisturbed that night.  
Tokyo was a place of cleansing and nightmares. Sweet perfume and the lingering stench of blood. Of familiar faces and new starts. Through another familiar face, I soon had a new job and was on a plane heading home. Over the ocean, I pulled the curtain down, I kept thinking of Henry being down there and how maybe none of us would really get home at all, we would all just be lost. Scotch helped.

And then, I was home. On American soil anyway. I really wish I had a Hannibal, or a Toledo, or a Crabapple Cove – a real home to come home to - but I didn’t. I did, however, have a brand new life waiting for me in Atlanta. And a small detour to make on the way.  
When he opened the door, my ”Hi dad” was met with silence, as he turned and walked into the house. Apparently, it is a very small world after all, and he had already heard. After a while, the actual words he was yelling lost all meaning, because it was all the same, in a never-ending loop. Dissapointed. Throwing my life away. After everything he had done for me. Not the way he raised me. It was apparent early on that I wasn’t as smart as he hoped I was gonna be, but he couldn’t believe I was actually this stupid. That I shouldn’t for a moment think that he wasn’t aware of what kind of reputation I had, spreading my legs for every man above the grade of captain looking my way. What did I think it did to a man to have a daughter like that? If things didn’t work out for me in that substandard civilian hospital, I could just walk down to the nearest streetcorner and keep doing the only thing I seemed to have any real talent for.  
I got up and left. I didn’t cry, not until I had checked in to a hotel, and was half way through a bottle of wine. Then I did cry. Then I got mad. No, dad, I don’t know what it does to a man to have a daughter with that kind of reputation. What I can tell you a great deal about though, is what it’s like to be that daughter, and have a father who from very early on made it clear she wasn’t good enough. No matter how hard she tried. Hell, I could write a rather substantial novel about that. I would even go as far as saying that both of our experiences are deeply connected, dad.  
The next morning I kept going north.

The apartment I had rented wasn’t anything special, two bedrooms, a decent sized living room and a kitchen with cupboards the ugliest shade of yellow I had ever seen.  
It came furnished, with the bare essentials. I didn’t really mind though, I was just enjoying having a place to call my own, and the prospect of a normal, ordinary life.  
A big bed under a roof that didn’t leak still didn’t make the dreams go away, but I figured that would get better as soon as work started, as if the mundane routines of an ordinary life would make the old terrors go away.

Work really was nice at first. The staff competent and well meaning. The patients got to leave the hospital and recover in the safety of their homes, not being shipped back to the front only to leave in a body bag, or go home with parts of them left behind. I wanted to relate and bond with my new colleagues, but I couldn’t. I kept comparing them with my old ones, and they just didn’t measure up.  
I didn’t see the passion in them, didn’t find the rhythm I had with BJ or Charles. Or Hawkeye. Most of all I thought of him.  
  
The dreams got worse. I woke up one night, immediately overwhelmed with the feeling that I wasn’t alone in bed. Someone was holding on to my wrist. I opened my eyes and looked in to the face of a young soldier. He stared at me with terrified blue eyes, opened his mouth and bellowed. Just as he did when he was brought into camp with the lower part of him missing. He was impossibly still alive then, still wailing, still twisting and turning. Now, he was impossibly in my bed, still twisting and turning, still wailing and grabbing. I screamed too, trying to pry his hands off me, to get away, away from the awful screaming. It wasn’t until I slid off the bed and hit the floor I woke up for real. I scooted up against the wall and just sat there, too terrified to move. I was sure he was going to come at me again, come crawling out from under the bed, dragging me with him, into the darkness. But he didn’t come back. Not that night.  
Other nights I heard a baby crying, and I knew it was the sweet baby girl some poor soul left in camp. She was crying, because the monks of the monastery never found her, and she was alone in the dark. I kept searching but I couldn’t find her and the cries became weaker and weaker.  
I would dream of wounded, hundereds of them, in a big field. I knew I had to help them, but there were so many, all so broken. I could see they were screaming and begging, but I couldn’t hear any of them. All I could hear was the wind and my own heartbeats.  
One night I dreamed of Hawkeye. We were back in the hut, together on the dirt floor. I could feel his hands on me, the warmth of his body, his breath hot on my neck. Then he was pulled away from me, and I realized the room was full of enemy soldiers. One of them had a big knife and I had to watch Hawkeye die before me. Then I was all alone, and it was their hands on me.  
That was the worst one, and like the others – it kept coming back.  
  
I spent so many nights wandering around my apartment, terrified of going back to sleep. I started to feel like a ghost, trapped and doomed to wander. Maybe I didn’t make it back from Korea after all, maybe I died there but didn’t know it, and this was actually purgatory.   
I wanted to be seen, to feel like I was actually there. I also really wanted to drink, but I didn’t want to drink alone.  
The clubs were warm and welcoming. To slide up on a barstool and feel eyes on me felt like control, like I was actually part of the world. And from there the dance was beautifully familiar and wonderfully mundane. To smile and laugh. Let a hand rest on an arm or thigh. To lean in close on the dancefloor, and not move away when a hand drops too low for public decency. And later in bed – mine, his or the property of a hotel of some sorts, that dance too is so familiar. A warm body next to me, a comrade for the small hours of night, does make it a bit easier. If only for a few hours. Like sex is a spell, an incantation to ward off spirits from the past. Maybe if I repeat it a thousand times the ghosts will go away.  
  
Then it wasn’t just the nights anymore.  
I turned a corner in a hospital corridor, and there was Henry Blake. He was wearing his pinstripe suit, the one he wore the day he went home only to never get home. He had his back towards me, and I was terrified he would turn around; I knew that if I saw his eyes I would go mad. It wasn’t until another nurse gently placed a hand on my shoulder asking what was wrong I realized I was crying. I’ve seen Henry again. In the OR. In the street. In my bedroom at night.  
I’ve heard choppers arrive and ran half way through the room before realizing there were no choppers, just a cafeteria full of people staring at me.  
I’ve heard Hawkeye sing “I’ve got you under my skin” and started to hum along, or I’ve seen his eyes looking back at me from over a mask. That wasn’t bad, not bad at all, but it’s very hard to hold on to instruments or keep the tears away when a mundane case on the operating table suddenly turns into a gruesome wound full of shrapnel. When you look at a healthy limb and it turns black as the smell of week old gangrene fills your head. It makes it hard to function, and it turns reality frail.  
I’m starting to feel like a ghost at work too, wandering the halls without being altogether there.

I feel like I’m fading. Failing. I’m supposed to be unflappable. Rational. I’m supposed to be able to get on with my life, why am I stuck in the past? Why can’t I will the nightmares to go away, why can’t I be strong and independent and sturdy, god dammit, why do I have to rely on the company of strangers for some sense of reality, to get a decent couple of hours of rest? I want someone to stay in the morning, but how can I make someone stay when I can’t even find it in me to offer them a lousy cup of coffee? How can I make someone understand when just formulating words seem like too big of an effort? God, Sherman, I miss all of you so much! You all took a piece of my heart with you, and there is no part left for me. I want to see you all every day, and I’m so happy that you’re all home.  
  
Then I met one of you in possession of a piece of my heart. Medical conference in Sacramento. My boss was thrilled when I asked if I could attend, what an opportunity to get a week free from the crazy war veteran haunting the hallways. I don’t really know why I wanted to go, maybe I thought a change of scene would be good for me. Again. Turns out, many of the attendees were there for the same reason, a change. Or a cheat. One night, I was at a club with a group from Pennsylvania, dancing with a cardiologist with a ring on his finger, when I heard a familiar voice ask ”What does a nice girl like you do in a place like this?” And there he was, sweet sweet BJ, all teeth and smile and the warmest hug. My long lost brother standing before me, I just wanted to hold him and never let go. He looked at the cardiologist with distrust, and considering how close we were dancing I felt like I should have remembered his name and introduced them, but I didn’t. Didn’t really care. BJ was there. We talked and laughed and for the first time since coming back to the States, I felt happy. And then he had to leave, driving home to Mill Valley early in the morning. When we had hugged goodbye and he was gone it felt even worse than before. The cardiologist was a poor substitute, but at least he was there.  
  
Then I was home. Home in a home that didn’t feel like a home. Back at work where I was just going through the motions, and barely even that. I still can be a good nurse, I know it’s still in me, but I’m just so tired. For the last couple of months I havn’t done anything more advanced than taking blood preassures and saying that the doctor will be right with you, and even that is becoming too much to handle. And if I can’t be a nurse, then what am I?  
I look at myself in the mirror and find it strange that I still have a reflection. I shouldn’t, I don’t really feel like a person anymore, there is nothing left of me. Nothing left of the confident, strong and dedicated woman who arrived in Korea 100 years ago.

Maybe I should get a dog. Or a parakeet. Maybe I should learn how to play the guitarr or take up yoga. Maybe I should move to the country and grow dahlias. I also have a bottle of pills.  
So, dear sweet Sherman, if you don’t hear from me again, maybe it’s because I’m too busy with my expanding dahlia emporium. Or maybe Prince Charming showed up and swept me off my feet to a land far far away. Or maybe I went for the pills. I hope I won’t.

* * *

* * *

It was at hot day in early august when she came home from work and found him sitting outside her apartment, his back against the door and his eyes closed. At first she froze, thinking he was just another figment of her imagination. She approached him with tentative steps and when she was close enough to almost reach out and touch him, she whispered “Hawkeye?”  
  
”Margaret” he said with a small smile, his eyes still closed,”I can smell your perfume.”  
  
He reached out for her, she took his hand and was caught off guard when he pulled her down towards him, and she half fell half sat down on his lap.  
  
”There’s that ladylike grace I’ve missed so much,” he said, still with the small smile on his lips.  
  
His eyes met hers, and she was startled with what she saw. His eyes was haunted, dark and deprived of the spark that always seemed to linger there.  
Before she could say anything, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as he buried his face into the crook of her neck.  
  
“Are you real?” she whispered. “Really here?”  
  
“I am,” he mumbled, his face still buried against her skin. “I really am. God, I missed you.”  
  
She felt her throat tighten, and couldn’t answer. She just hugged him back, trying to take in his presence, that it really was his arms around her.  
Eventually a door slammed further down the hall, and the spell was broken.  
  
“Come on” she managed as they clumsily untangled themselves and got off the floor.  
  
The apartment was hot and stuffy and she went and opened a window.  
When she turned around, he was standing in the middle of the room. It seemed surreal to her, like two worlds colliding and it made her feel lightheaded. She found she couldn’t really meet his eyes, the darkness, the unfamiliarity of them scared her. But then again maybe hers were the same way.  
  
“Drink?”  
  
“Yes”  
  
“Scotch?”  
  
“Yes”  
  
She got the bottle and two glasses and they sat down on the couch.  
  
“So, Margaret, how have you been?” he asked in a light tone that seemed forced.  
  
“Fine” she said, handing him a glass. “It’s been intense, leaving the army, coming home, starting over in a new place, new job. But this is exactly what I wanted, a new life, a new city, a place to call home.” She made a vague gesture at the room, suddenly very aware of how barren it looked. She had meant to do some decorating, put up a few paintings, buy some plants, but she hadn’t had the energy. And now, seeing him look around the room, the state of the place made her feel embarrassed, and that annoyed her.  
  
“Yeah, I havn’t really had the time to fix the place up yet. I’ve been really, really busy, starting over, with a new job, getting to know new people, a new city.” This need to explain herself to him annoyed her even more.  
  
“To new starts” he said, raising his glass. They drank. “How did your father take it? You leaving the army?”  
  
“He… wasn’t thrilled at first, but I think he is starting to come around. I don’t really blame him, it must have been a shock. I don’t know, I… I havn’t really talked to him a lot lately. I’ve been busy, with the new job, new city…” The same words again, she hated how insecure she sounded.  
The apartment was too hot, she felt sweaty and flustered, and him sitting there with, what was that, pity in his strange new eyes suddenly made her angry.  
“You know, Pierce, some of us had to start from scratch” she snapped. “And it hasn’t really been that easy. And you don’t understand what it’s like, not having anyone to talk to, just trying to get by on your own. Not everyone had a nice, quaint hometown and a loving devoted father to come home to.”  
  
He seemed a bit taken aback by the harchness of her voice.  
He sighed. “Yeah, well, as it turns out, the hometown I missed so much was still as nice and quaint as ever when I got back. Only, I wasn’t anymore. And for my dad, I think he’s still waiting for his son to come home.” He took a big gulp from his glass.  
  
“So after a whole year you felt the need to pay a social call? Pierce, what’s wrong, why are you here?”  
  
“Wrong, why should something be wrong?” His voice was full of sarcasm. “Do I look wrong?”  
  
Her irritation turned into anger.  
“Yes, you do!” she yelled, getting off the couch. “You look wrong and I found you waiting at my door which is wrong because you’re supposed to be in Crabapple Cove, being a charming small town doctor and now you’re sitting on my couch and your eyes look all wrong and maybe mine do too because god knows I’m wrong!”  
  
“Margaret” He said softly, “I wanted to come see you so many times.”  
  
“Oh really, what stopped you?”  
  
“Because I had to believe you were ok!” He stood up too. “Margaret, I’ve been struggling ever since I got back. I thought it would be easy, all I wanted for three years was to come home again. And then I was home, only not really, not the same person that left, he never came back. I havn’t been able to do anything, I just drift around the house or go out on the boat. My dad is waiting for me to start working with him at the clinic, but I can’t imagine being responsible for patients again. What kept me going, made it a bit more bearable, was thinking about all of you, home and safe. Radar with a straw hat, sauntering around the farm. Colonel Potter having lemonade with Mildred on the porch. BJ playing with Erin. But most of all I thought of you. Bossing around new nurses, moving forward, being safe and happy. Not like me. Margaret, there is nothing left of me. But if there’s nothing, at least I could have you, the thought of you. I can’t even…. I don’t know how to live anymore.”  
His voice trailed off, and he emptied the glass that was still in his hand, put it back on the table.  
  
She felt a twinge of sympathy but the anger was still stronger.  
“Well, I can’t help you with that. If you want to learn how to live, you have to look elsewhere. Or did you just want to share your misery?”  
  
“No, I…. I wanted you. To see you. I wanted to come for so long, but I didn’t want to mess up your life. I thought you were doing fine. But then I got a phone call a while back. From Colonel Potter. He asked about you, if I had talked to you. He told me about a letter you’d sent. He was worried, said that he got the feeling you were struggling.” He took a couple of steps towards her.  
  
“Wait, what?” she backed away from him. “Colonel Potter called you? Why the hell would he do that, he couldn’t just call me himself, he had to get you involved?”  
  
“He said he´d tried to call, but you never picked up. Margaret, you know he only had your best interest in mind, you can’t be mad at him for caring. But I started to worry that maybe you weren’t doing as well as I had hoped. And then, I talked to BJ, he told me about meeting you at that conference.”  
  
“BJ?” she said with disbelief. “I saw him for like three minutes, at a club. In that time he made a complete diagnosis of me and my struggling ways?”  
  
“Lost was the word he used. He told me you looked lost. That you were in some skimpy dress, dancing very close to some guy who didn’t seem all that nice.”  
  
“What? How dare he?” she spat, furious now. “Well all hail St BJ, savior of scantily dressed women everywhere. Who the hell does he think he is? He was all smiles and pleasantries when we met, and then he called you to complain about my outfit? I am so very sorry it wasn’t up to his standards. You can tell him, that dress might not have been very big but at least it cost a pretty penny. And that guy I was dancing with actually was kind of nice. Don’t remember his name though, isn’t that just scandalous; what ever will holier-than-thou BJ think of that? Still a nice enough distraction for the night, though. Sweet. Not like the guy I met the other night and ended up having not entirely consensual sex with in the backseat of his car.”  
  
Hawkeye looked pained. “Margaret,” he said in a pleading voice, reaching out for her.  
  
“Don’t touch me” she hissed, slapping his hand away. “What, I deserved it, didn’t I. Skimpy dress and all. And it’s not really like it was the first time either, remember all those Generals you used to tease me about? Not every time with them was all that consensual either, not that any of you ever cared. And you didn’t really seem that bothered when that plastic surgeon friend of yours tried to rape me in the supply room, so why the hell should you care now? I don’t know how to live anymore either. I see Korea all the time, it’s with me all the time. I can’t sleep because I dream of wounded, or I see you die before me, or there are hands grabbing me, or there’s Henry, but he’s there in the days too and he’s dead and I can’t look at him but he keeps coming back and he won’t go away. I… I was better with all of you, you made me better. Then it was just me and it was lonely and terrifying and I just wanted something I could control. All of you were getting on with your lifes in places far away from here and I just couldn’t do it. I can’t do it.” Her voice broke and she gasped. “I hardly even know what’s real anymore, or if I’m even real. Being with someone at least makes me feel real for a little while and maybe I can get some rest afterwards. Or drinking, that helps too, but I don’t want to drink alone, I don’t want to turn into my mother and how dare you judge me for this? Who the hell do you think you are?”  
  
“Margaret, I am not judging you, believe me. Neither was BJ, he was just worried, he cares about you.”  
  
“Oh yes, he was obviously so very worried that he happily left me in that bar with that guy. So worried that he just had to get his beauty sleep before going back to his lovely, lovely family. And then he called you? And just what are you supposed to do, sweep in here on your white horse and save me from my unladylike ways?“  
  
“Margaret,” he tried, taking a step towards her.  
  
“Stop saying my name, dammit, I know what I’m called” she snapped. “So you are here to see if I’m okay, after over a year of no contact at all. Because Colonel Potter and BJ asked you to check up on me, when they for some reason couldn’t just ask me themselves if they were so goddamn worried. No, I’m not ok, that’s what you can report back to them. The unflappable Major Houlihan is not ok, she might not even be real anymore. Maybe just a ghost in a skimpy dress.”  
  
“Marg…” he caught himself, starting over. “I know you are not ok, and believe me, I know what it’s like to not even recognize yourself anymore. I don’t sleep either, I don’t work, I don’t do anything except drink too much and slowly killing both myself and my dad. One night I was out on the boat, it was getting dark and I was too drunk and too far off shore. I thought about just jumping in, swimming out as far as I could and then just let go. Do you know what stopped me? Not the thought of my dad, because as much worry I have cost him since I got back I honestly think he would be better off. I thought of you. If I died, I wouldn’t find out what happened to you. I thought, maybe tomorrow there will be a knock on the door, and she will stand there. Then I got those calls, and it sounds so stupid but I thought maybe it was a sign. So I came here, and seeing you today was the best thing that happened to me in a very long time. But BJ was right, you do look so lost, and it’s breaking my heart.” His voice broke off and he took a deep breath. “You have been on my mind ever since I got back, I have missed you every day, every minute. I have stayed away because I didn’t want to pull you down too. But together maybe we’ll be a little bit less lost. Maybe just a little bit but that’s better, right? Better than nothing?”  
  
He was standing in the middle of the room with his arms hanging at his sides, looking so much like a sad little boy it made her want to cry. She felt drained, the anger leaving room for exhaustion.  
“I’m sorry I didn’t knock on your door,” she said in a small voice, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m glad you didn’t swim away.”  
  
In just a few steps he closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close. For a long time the only thing moving in the room was the curtain blowing in the breeze.  
  
“What if we pull each other down even further?” she asked, leaning away a little to look at him.  
  
“If we try and fail, at least we will know.” He placed his hands on the sides of her face, looking deep into her eyes.  
  
The intensity of his gaze was suddenly too much to handle, she broke away from him, taking a few steps back.  
“Hawkeye, you can’t expect me to save you. I’m not the same person you remember, I’m not who you want me to be.”  
  
“I don’t expect anything. I just need to be with you, whoever you are now. We both understand, no one else does. Just be there, and I will be there for you, and maybe together we can heal a bit.  
If it doesn’t work out, we can always just swim away.”  
  
She looked at him in silence for a little while, and then held out her right hand.  
“Okay. If it doesn’t work out, we swim away.”  
  
He took her hand, covered it with both of his.  
“Will you come with me? To Maine? I want you to meet my dad, I’ve told him about you. The house is big, and there’s the forest and the ocean, and it will be fall soon, it’s really beautiful in the fall. And you can help out at the clinic if you want to, or get some other job, it doesn’t matter, just please say you’re coming with me. Please come right now.”  
  
Once again, he looked like a lost little boy, and when she saw tears in his eyes, she pulled her hand away, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He responded immediately, pulled her close and kissed her back with a desperation she knew mimicked her own.  
  
“Will you come?” he asked tentatively when they finally broke the kiss.  
  
“I’ll come” she whispered.”I’ll come.”

* * *

* * *

_  
  
Dear Sherman,_

_It’s a little after midnight, three days before Christmas, and I can’t sleep. No bad dreams tonight, just the wind howling. Hawkeye and Daniel are used to the winter storms up here and can sleep through them, but it keeps me up. It’s actually quite beautiful out there, the moon comes and goes and from the living room you can see the waves crashing in.  
Major is here with me, keeping me company, her head on my lap. Yes, we have a dog. It was Daniels idea. The name was Hawkeyes, he says it’s because she has a mighty bark just like someone he used to know once. And for a medium sized terrier, I guess she does. She loves to run on the beach, and to annihilate big sticks on the living room carpet. She takes up way too much space on the bed and is absolutely shameless in her begging as soon as someone steps into the kitchen. In the short time we’ve had her, we have already spoiled her rotten, and couldn’t love her more. She makes the bad days a bit more bearable.  
For there still are bad days. Sometimes really bad, but also really good ones, thankfully. Maine is beautiful. The house is beautiful. Hawkeye is beautiful. Some days I can’t stand to see him, and we sometimes drive Daniel and Major out of the house with our arguing. But to care enough to actually argue feels good. We really are better together, still broken, but a little bit less so every day. I know that if he hadn’t shown up on my doorstep back in august I would be broken beyond repair now.  
Thank you for sending him my way. Thank you for being as perceptive as ever.  
  
I’ve been helping Daniel out at the clinic a bit, mostly with administration, but lately also with patients. It’s been good. Hawkeye still doesn’t work. He’s been doing some repairs on the house, and has actually taken an interest in cooking. I honestly don’t know if he will ever get back into medicine. But for now, just seeing him excited about a new culinary experiment, or about teaching Major a new trick is enough._  
_The nightmares still come. But Hawkeye is there to wake me up, his arms comforting and safe. He is the only nightmare repellant I ever want. For the rest of my life._  
  
_Henry still comes too. A couple of weeks back, I was on the beach with Major, standing at the shoreline. And there he was, in the corner of my eye, standing beside me. I still couldn’t get myself to look at him, but he didn’t scare me so bad anymore. Then Major barked, I looked away, and when I looked back he was gone. I don’t know if he’ll come back, but if he does – maybe I can actually face him. Maybe it won’t be so bad._

_The storm is still howling, but I think Major and I are ready to go back upstairs now. To crawl into bed next to my sleeping Prince Charming who actually did show up to sweep me off my feet and take me to a land far far away. It’s not all magical here, but there’s life and there’s love. Not a fairy tale ending, but we won’t be swimming away either._

_All my love, now and always_

_Margaret_

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction. It’s actually the first fictional story I’ve written on over 20 years.  
> Staying home a lot over the last year made me rediscover MASH, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what would happen to everyone when the war was over. Especially what would happen to Margaret, my favourite character. Then a couple of sentences popped in to my mind, and I decided to write them down, to see if any other sentences would follow, and it evolved in to this story.  
> I’ve enjoyed the writing process immensely, and I hope someone out there will enjoy the story.  
> English is not my first language, so I apologize for any stupid grammatical errors.  
> Of course I do not own the characters, I just love them.


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